‘Gangster’ Shot Dead by Police Was ‘Helping Old Ladies’ Claim Family
The family of an alleged South London gang member, who was shot dead by armed police officers as he sat in his car last week, told reporters he was, ‘a wonderful, caring person’ who was probably waiting to help elderly ladies across the busy street.
The dead man, Clyde Benoit, 23, known by friends and associates as ‘Rankin’ Baby Dread’, was hit by 5 bullets fired by an armed police response officer who claims Mr Benoit had reached for a concealed weapon, later found to be a Glock semi-automatic pistol, as the officer approached the vehicle to question him about an armed raid on a post office earlier that day. An AK47 assault rifle and a large quantity of a Class A drugs were also found in the victim’s car.
His mother, Claudette, 42, told reporters: “He sometimes carried a weapon to defend himself against rival, public-spirited boys from different neighbourhoods who would often try to help the old ladies across the road before he got the chance to go to their aid. He kept the drugs in the car in case one of the old people fell over and needed pain relief. The officers who took my boy’s life are nothing more than cold-blooded murderers in my opinion and I hope they get everything that’s coming to them.”
This latest incident comes just 2 weeks after police arrested an alleged underwear thief who later claimed that he had stumbled while taking a short cut home through a woman’s back garden and had clung to the washing line to avoid falling, removing 8 pairs of panties and stuffing them into his pockets in the process.
